Schwack

Considering the speed and agility difference between the two, I have a hard time believing snails are beating shrimp to anything. You might want to investigate other causes for your shrimp deaths. I have tanks packed with snails and shrimp, both caridina and neos. The shrimp have no trouble shoving ramshorns out of the way or just running off with their prize and leaving the snails to eat their dust.

As you said, infections like you're seeing happen for a bunch of reasons. You're occasionally going to run into sick fish and a lot of the time our treatments are a shot in the dark. I wouldn't get too discouraged losing a fish while trying your best to keep them healthy. Honestly, I've had the best experience with recovery using just salt. I only bring out the meds when things are dire. The only thing I can suggest is moving fish/plants around to try and minimize aggression. It sounds like you've had a few instances of nipped fins/fighting and that's something you can take care off with larger schools or more hiding spots.

If everything is goin well, why would you want to introduce chemicals to make things "better"? Seems to me your tank's inhabitants are happy and healthy in the current environment, changing things just for change's sake doesn't seem worthwhile.

It was just a very slow process, maybe one every 4-5 weeks. That's part of what made it hard to diagnose. Unfortunately, ParaCleanse won't be effective on camallanus. I've read that fenbendazole will temporarily paralyze the worms, but not kill them. Whether that's true or not is tough to verify. Levamisole will wipe them out and it's gentle on the tank. I've never had issues with invert death while using it. If I were in your shoes, the next mystery death that occurs (if there is one) would prompt me to do an autopsy. It's kind of grim, since these are pets, but I viewed it as a necessary procedure to get a positive diagnosis. Camallanus in my rainbows was very obvious, their entire digestive tract was red and wriggling. Of course, this is dependent on you finding the fish before any snails or shrimp.

My CO2 art regulator was faulty out of the box. The solenoid wouldn't shut off the gas when power was removed. Rather than replace the unit, I went back and forth with them for 6+ weeks trying to replace every little bit of it. I eventually found a combo that got the unit working, but I don't trust it and I don't trust that they'll actually stand behind their product if it fails again. Especially considering the premium they charge. I've heard good things about Green Leaf Aquariums kits. I'd probably buy through them if I had to do it again

I don't have experience with WCMMs, but I had a very similar experience with two varieties of pseudomugil. They'd be happy, healthy and eating and then suddenly distressed, bottom sitting and dead shortly after. I ended up doing an autopsy out of desperation and was able to ID camallanus worms. I only saw an external worm briefly and it was so tiny I wouldn't have noticed if I wasn't watching the fish extremely carefully. Treatment is easy, but can result in fish death if the infestation is advanced. Select Aquatics sells levamisol powder, and I think the Coop carries Expel-P now.

What made you decide to tinker with the pH? The only fish that might not love your more alkaline water are the tetra, but they're adaptable little fish. I'd second @colo3000's recommendation to put a mesh baggy with some crushed coral in there and let things settle on their own. Plants and snails ought to be fine with all the wild swings, I've never noticed any die offs when mucking about with water parameters in such dramatic fashion. If it were my tank, I'd ditch the RODI water and use the stuff with higher kH right out of the tap. Make things as easy on yourself as possible, it's much easier to keep up with maintenance when it's not a huge PITA every time you need to perform a water change.

I asked the same question! I was told the important time is the moment they're laid. So you could move your adults to soft water, let them fill a mop and then move them all back to more typical water post hatch.

When the males color up and start flaring at each other it's quite a show. I went into breeding them with cpds as my only experience and have definitely struggled a bit. I could turn out batches of 50 cpd fry every few weeks, but not these guys. I'm hoping the second generation will be more tolerant of my water, but not holding my breath. As it was explained to me, the harder water causes the exterior of the egg to harden faster, resulting in more failed fertilizing. I was also unaware that they don't go through a sucker phase, it seems as though they leave the egg free swimming.

I kept both furcatus and gertrudae together for several months... Until I ran into camallanus worms. Like you said, super tough little guys. I lost most of my group to the worms, but I've since replaced the furcatus as I find their color stands out a bit better. I'll likely pick up a few gertrudae when I trade in some of the babies from this group. My largest male is well over two inches... He's a behemoth compared to his tank mates and bullies the other boys accordingly. They're a bit trickier to spawn than you might think. They'll lay eggs and such all day, but hatching them has been a bit difficult in my water. I spoke with a guy from Australia who had attended some conservation breeding talks and it was passed on to him that they spawn best in soft water. My experience with very hard water is that I get a lot of unfertilized eggs, but that's really not the end of the world. I'm sitting on 20ish fry at the moment, and I'll probably breed them again once this group is ready to leave my baby tank. If you're interested in rainbow fish, the definitive guide to the species can be found here: https://www.rainbowfish.angfaqld.org.au/Book.htm

I'd just shoo them off the filter, they'll almost certainly cheese it once your hand is swirling about. I've occasionally had neos hang on to breeding mops out of water, but I'm not sure that's entirely on purpose. As far as the shyness goes, that's sort of par for the course in my experience. My shrimp don't seem to care about me at all, which means it might be several days between sightings in a heavily planted tank. They tend to go where the food is, so might try feeding them and the fish in the same general area. My neos commonly hang out in "the food spot."

That design looks very similar to the Marina series filters you can find on Amazon. I was gifted one and have actually been pretty happy with the thing. Since the pump is submerged, it's self-priming and there's a surprising amount of room for filter media in the box itself. They say their largest is only good for a 20 gallon, but that seems like it's selling the product short. Hopefully removing that silly LED isn't much of a chore, I like the design otherwise!

CPD bio load is pretty minimal, even once they're mature. I'd feel pretty good about a group of 20 in that cube. Like most little guys, the more you have, the prettier they are. They're also shockingly easy to breed so starting with a group of 6-8 can easily turn into 50 without much extra work.

Yeah, it's a bit of a chore to get them on. Use warm water and it goes a bit easier, but it's definitely a pain.

Yep. If you pick fish who like decent flow, or have a large enough tank, they should be great.

The venturi add on or the flow ducting attachment? I ran the venturi so I could ditch a sponge filter. The flow ducting attachment helped some, but my gourami just couldn't tolerate the flow.

I've got one that I had in a 40 breeder. I found the flow to be too much for my pearl gourami and removed it, otherwise it was a very nice filter. It was quiet and moved a lot volume. Once I move my gourami I'm going to fire it up again, I think my amazon puffers would dig the flow.

Having just spent several weeks researching my own puffer purchase, I noticed the general puffer community has settled on 30 gallons as the minimum size for congo puffers. If I had to guess, a 30/40 breeder would provide an ideal minimum at 36" long. I know length is more important than width for SAP's, I'd be willing to bet the same is true for congo puffers. A cube just doesn't seem like it would provide enough open swim area for such intelligent fish. https://www.thepufferforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=28653 There's a wealth of information on thepufferforum. It may be worth your while to research this specific situation there.

My first bottle of Easy Green had a bum pump too. I fiddled with it a bit, but it's just as easy to grab a little pipette and dose. My current bottle, from the new size, works pretty much spot on.

I do the same. I'll generally avoid feeding on day 1 so I can darken the tank and let them de-stress a bit. I've made exceptions to this if I buy fish in the morning, before the fish store has fed them. I'll typically feed rich foods for a week or so with the same intent as Hutch. Meds can be tough on fish, especially if they're passing parasites or fighting infection, so my goal is to build their strength up and minimize their external stress before I put them through courses of medication.

Buy a bigger tank. 5 gallons are a massive pain and severely limit your options. I wish I had started with a 29 or 40. Deworm everything. Paracleanse AND Levamisol.

Are there any options designed such that they can't fail in an ON state? I typically buy undersized heaters for my tanks, and I've had good luck with Jagers and Finnex M heaters, but after picking up some semi-expensive fish I'm now paranoid about cooking them. My house stays at a pretty consistent 71-72F, so failing in an off state isn't the end of the world for the fish I keep. None of 'em would make it if a heater pushed things into the 90s. I've been agonizing about replacing the heater for a few days now and found the titanium Bulk Reef Supply heating elements. They don't come with an internal temperature controller and rely entirely on an Inkbird or other temp controller. They're significantly more expensive than off-the-shelf heaters, but they seem built around typical failure points. Anyone have experience with them?

Figured I'd just bump this thread rather than start a new one. I picked up an edsal rack from Lowes over the weekend. So far, I've been really happy with it except for the shelf design. The braces running front to back are in the middle and edges of the shelves. This creates high spots on each shelf so anything that doesn't run the full length creates pressure points. Right now one of the shelves has a rimless 10 gallon on it. I put down a 1/8" piece of sealed MDF topped with 6mm EVA foam. Figured I'd be extra cautious since it's a rimless tank. I've got a rimmed 29 gallon I'd like to put on one of the shelves, but I'm not sure if I should bother with a piece of plywood on top of the wire. Could I just put down a layer of the EVA foam to level out the shelf and set the tank directly on the foam?

Watching them rocket to the surface and bounce around in the water column is one of the reasons I take care to provide extra food for the little buggers. They're shockingly fun to watch, on top of being excellent janitors.

Mine do this seemingly at random. They'll spend large chunks of the day hanging on floaters for seemingly no reason. No parameter issues or temp fluctuations necessary. I have noticed that my bladder snails don't participate in the floating shenanigans except on rare occasions.